Crypto Week Summary: Bitcoin and Ethereum Sink on Fed’s Crazy Friday

The cryptocurrency market was having an uneventful week – until Friday when Bitcoin, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, dropped 4% in the space of 24 hours.

The price drop was triggered by Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell’s remarks in Jackson Hole that the Fed will continue to raise interest rates as long as necessary to fight inflation. The comments also sent the stock market reeling, it wasn’t just cryptocurrencies that suffered.

To kick off the weekend, all top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap have accumulated a net loss over the past seven days, with the exception of Cardano (ADA), which is anticipating a hard fork next month. Bitcoin (BTC) is down 5% last week, Ethereum (ETH) is down 6%, Solana (SOL) is down 10%, Dogecoin (DOGE) is down 8%.

Ethereum supporters still have high hopes that the next merger event will pump ETH. But this week, the number of weekly ETH deposits sent for staking on the Beacon Chain hit an all-time low, as per data from Dune Analytics.

Beacon Chain is an Ethereum ledger that coordinates the Ethereum stakers network. It has been running in parallel with the Ethereum mainnet since its launch in 2020. When Ethereum completes its next major network overhaul next month, dubbed the “merger”, the mainnet will be merged with the Beacon Chain to make the Ethereum is a fully proof of stake (PoS) network.

Once Ethereum transitions to a proof-of-stake consensus protocol, the network promises to be faster, cheaper, more scalable and 99% greener.

The biggest cryptocurrency news of the week

The general inertia in the markets this week was reflected in the news cycle; It was a pretty slow news week with regards to cryptocurrency adoption or regulation.

The Australian Treasury said in a statement on Monday that it has a comprehensive plan to establish a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies based on market research that it claims is better than “anywhere else in the world.”

Australia will begin “token mapping” work this year, which it says will “help identify how crypto assets and related services should be regulated.” After the preliminaries, the Treasury says it will have a “deadline for changes in legislation and regulations”. The Australian Treasury also said it will “soon” release a public consultation document on token mapping.

On Tuesday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong confessed to CNBC that the company is still feeling the effects of the crypto winter. Coinbase laid off 18% of its staff earlier this year and will cut costs in an effort to plan for a bear market that lasts 12 to 18 months or longer.

“We are investing a lot today in subscription and service revenue,” said Armstrong, because “I would like to get to a place where more than 50% of our revenue is from subscription and services.”

According to Armstrong, 18% of Coinbase’s current revenue comes from subscriptions and services. Currently, Coinbase offers Coinbase Cloud, a suite of blockchain product development services, and Coinbase One, a service that offers top-notch customer support and other benefits.

Meanwhile, US investors waiting for an SEC-approved Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) will have to wait a little longer after the decision on VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF order was delayed again for another 45-day period. That means the agency has until October 11 to “approve or disapprove, or institute proceedings to determine whether to disapprove the proposed rule change.”

Finally, we received an update on the Ethereum merger date – and it is potentially even earlier than previously expected. According to a Wednesday post from the Ethereum Foundation, the network review will now be fully completed between September 10th and 20th. Top Ethereum developers on Twitter were even more specific: on or around September 15th.

After eight years of waiting, this is really just around the corner.

*Translated with permission from Decrypt.co.

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